I’ve personally been using Cleo for a while and I’m continually impressed by the engagement tools they introduce to get people more active in managing their daily finances, in a way they may have not been doing before.
I don’t tend to engage with the Cleo bot much as still prefer self-serving through the dashboard with automated tools and push notifications working in the background. But I’m really looking forward to seeing their AI become more intelligently responsive to users! Interested to hear more from people that do ask Cleo questions to surface insights about their spending/budgets.
Like other digi banks, they heavily and repeatedly engage with customers, and it shows through what they deliver.
The multiple choice spending survey they do which asks ‘how much did you spend last week?’ annoys me because they don’t support all my accounts. So I always get the answer wrong
It’s another service where I find all the GIFs and emojis a bit much sometimes too. When it asks if you want a breakdown and gives you two emojis to click on? How am I supposed to know which is which when the options are or ?
Generally though I find some of it quite useful. The lower spending this month / on course to beat your budget are good notifications.
“You’ve spent more than 97% of Cleo users on X in the last 3 months” is an interesting point. It relies on correct categories for say Groceries, but if it’s for Netflix then I don’t care, I know how much I spend on Netflix and don’t care if other users are on a cheaper plan, they likely have different requirements.
I haven’t tried any of the savings or payments to others part of it yet though, interested to what other people’s thoughts are on those!
I do have a peeve with this one when it relates to merchants. It looks as if it’s across all Cleo users, rather than Cleo users that have actually shopped at that merchant. Either way, not sure if benchmarking is useful to me and will change my behaviour - as you say, different circumstances. It’ll have to get to a point where it benchmarks me against people with similar salary, age, living costs/arrangements etc.
Hi @rippy interesting post, I have previously been using Plum (also messenger based),for about 4 months and recently saw an advert for Cleo, have you looked into Plum or previously switched from Plum to Cleo? I guess it would be an easy thing to use Cleo and compare both, just wondering if there are other users with their pros / cons to Plum over Cleo or the other way around.
Yeah, good q - do people use both or one or the other?
I’ve only recently opened a Plum account so can’t speak too much of it. Will keep you posted though! I understand it to be a standalone service for savings/investment, and at least with Plum you can earn interest on your balance. Whereas Cleo is at its core a PFM tool with useful and broader nudges/insights around day to day finances.
Interesting for those utilising Cleo savings feature vs. service/products where you can earn interest - the ROI comes secondary to actually putting away money for some people.
Got notified this morning that Plum can now inform me of my transactions/balances, but it’ll need to do all the work Cleo is doing behind the scenes to make transaction categorisation accurate and drive insights that are actionable and personalised.
I’ll look into Chip, I liked using Plum to put savings away, but since using Monzo, I like the fact that your money moves over straight away. plum seems to be taking around a week to out savings away. Way too slow now I’ve used Monzo.
Used my Monzo card this morning, so there was no money left in the main pot, opened up my banking app transferred money and instantly available. Which also works for my savings! It’s a great App!
Has anyone seen AI with a chatbot interface done exceptionally well? Particularly for things as complex as finances (as opposed to FAQ or appointment booking bots). I’d be incredibly impressed if Cleo got to a level where it was truly my personal assistant and there was a hybrid of doing things for me automatically and asking me how’d I like things customised, all in the most natural conversation. We’re really far off from that aren’t we?
Right now there’s a need for everyone to go into the dashboard and recategorise transactions as we all have variations in how we organise our finances. But once itemised receipts become a real thing for example, and it continually learns from how I like things sorted, it’d be hyper-intelligent and tuned into me.
But my main question is, to get it to that next level personalised state, do users need to be more engaged with their finances? Where’s the line between do it for me vs. i want to do it myself. I’m mostly asking as I’m extremely passively engaged and have already dropped off in recategorising transactions (and without doing it I don’t get maximum value from the insights). In short, do you think people will be willing to have pure dialogue with Cleo to manage their money? It’s interesting as mobile banking apps and the digital banks are all about self-serve but in a way you’re working together with Cleo to do banking.
I’m rambling unstructured thoughts so let me know if I need to make more sense!
I find it hard to engage with Cleo when it’s constantly shoving emoji’s and animations in my face.
I guess the hard part with AI chatbots is some of them are too friendly, it might suit some users but it doesn’t suit me personally. If i’m discussing finances I expect a certain level of seriousness which Cleo just doesn’t manage right now. I might be being a bit of a dinosaur about it though, and the majority of users may be happy with this “fun” way of tracking their money.
@FuriousPorky I’m getting on with Chip, however with Monzo being instant, I’m bored of having to wait over a week for money to make it into these other services. If Monzo was able to offer the same options as Chip up to 5%interest for a year, but with it instantly being put into a pot that would be awesome!
or 
?
